USA Politics

[Cornfed Hick]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

All good points.  As for your last one, I applaud folks who voluntarily give money to others.  Charity is important, and I give some myself (undoubtedly not as much as I should, but certainly more than I would if my after-tax income were hacked by one-third).  My problem is when the government increases the taxes just to raise raise funds that are, as you put it quite well, "just shit away for no reason."  Agreed that George W. Bush is guilty of the same, just as, I think, Obama will be.  McCain at least admits he has no idea what he's doing, which means he'll rely on economic advisors, which is probably a good thing. 

 

[LooseCannon]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

All depending, of course, who McCain chooses to surround himself with.  If he chooses Bush's buddies, it may not be so different.  But you're absolutely right, except I don't think Obama is *entirely* stronger on the economy than McCain is, and will likely end up relying on advisors himself.  How much of his tax plan and various promises he chooses to attempt to pass will be interesting if he is elected.  I don't think redirecting some of the current spending to the US in the form of subsidies and such is a bad idea.

Maybe I should explain my background a bit.  As I was growing up in Canada, the biggest emphasis on governmental responsibility was on balanced budgets.  I would never, in good conscience, vote for a government that presents an unbalanced budget, even if they agreed with me on everything else.  Paying off our debts is the #1 goal for me as a citizen.  Because when we aren't paying billions in debt interest, that allows us to reduce taxes or increase spending by that amount.  In Nova Scotia, a province of appx. 1 million people, we are 11 billion in debt.  Recently we received compensation from the federal government in the form of 860 million dollars, which was entirely paid down on the debt, freeing up almost 50 million per annum in interest payments, money which is half returned to the debt next year, and half used on health and education spending.  With only 1 million people, adding 25 mil to our public services is a big jump, and that's the plan as the debt is paid down.

So that does influence me greatly.  I see no reason to run a deficit...ever.

 

[Cornfed Hick]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

A good policy in government, and in life. 

FYI, here's another article regarding Obama.  This one, from the New York Times, is about his time at The University of Chicago Law School.  I found this article particularly interesting because, although I did not take the opportunity to attend any of his courses, he was on the faculty while I was a student.  The comments by other law professors -- who, incidentally, were far more respected and beloved on campus than Obama at that point -- are especially noteworthy to me, simply because I know those folks.  The quote from Richard Epstein, one of the giants on the faculty, sounds exactly like him.  The consensus is that Obama was very smart and thoughtful, but that he never really took a stand on anything remotely controversial -- probably so it wouldn't come back to haunt him in is then-fledgling political career. 

Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart
By JODI KANTOR

CHICAGO — The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.

At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.

Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between an elite law school and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois Senate.

Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality — whether Americans will elect a black president — he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status.

Standing in his favorite classroom in the austere main building, sharp-witted students looming above him, Mr. Obama refined his public speaking style, his debating abilities, his beliefs.

“He tested his ideas in classrooms,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a colleague. Every seminar hour brought a new round of, “Is affirmative action justified? Under what circumstances?” as Mr. Hutchinson put it.

But Mr. Obama’s years at the law school are also another chapter — see United States Senate, c. 2006 — in which he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself. Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was well liked at the law school, yet he was always slightly apart from it, leaving some colleagues feeling a little cheated that he did not fully engage. The Chicago faculty is more rightward-leaning than that of other top law schools, but if teaching alongside some of the most formidable conservative minds in the country had any impact on Mr. Obama, no one can quite point to it.

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”

Mr. Obama had other business on his mind, embarking on five political races during his 12 years at the school. Teaching gave him satisfaction, along with a perch and a paycheck, but he was impatient with academic debates over “whether to drop a footnote or not drop a footnote,” said Abner J. Mikva, a mentor whose own career has spanned Congress, the federal bench and the same law school.

Douglas Baird, another colleague, remembers once asking Mr. Obama to assess potential candidates for governor.

“First of all, I’m not running for governor, “ Mr. Obama told him. “But if I did, I would expect you to support me.”

He was a third-year state senator at the time.

Popular and Enigmatic

Mr. Obama arrived at the law school in 1991 thanks to Michael W. McConnell, a conservative scholar who is now a federal appellate judge. As president of The Harvard Law Review, Mr. Obama had impressed Mr. McConnell with editing suggestions on an article; on little more than that, the law school gave him a fellowship, which amounted to an office and a computer, which he used to write his memoir, “Dreams From My Father.”

The school had almost no black faculty members, a special embarrassment given its location on the South Side. Its sleek halls bordered a neighborhood crumbling with poverty and neglect. In his 2000 Congressional primary race, Representative Bobby L. Rush, a former Black Panther running for re-election, used Mr. Obama’s ties to the school to label him an egghead and an elitist.

At the school, Mr. Obama taught three courses, ascending to senior lecturer, a title otherwise carried only by a few federal judges. His most traditional course was in the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law. His voting rights class traced the evolution of election law, from the disenfranchisement of blacks to contemporary debates over districting and campaign finance. Mr. Obama was so interested in the subject that he helped Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University, develop a leading casebook in the field.

His most original course, a historical and political seminar as much as a legal one, was on racism and law. Mr. Obama improvised his own textbook, including classic cases like Brown v. Board of Education, and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as conservative thinkers like Robert H. Bork.

Mr. Obama was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say. He assigned a 1919 catalog of lynching victims, including some who were first raped or stripped of their ears and fingers, others who were pregnant or lynched with their children, and some whose charred bodies were sold off, bone fragment by bone fragment, to gawkers.

“Are there legal remedies that alleviate not just existing racism, but racism from the past?” Adam Gross, now a public interest lawyer in Chicago, wrote in his class notes in April 1994.

For all the weighty material, Mr. Obama had a disarming touch. He did not belittle students; instead he drew them out, restating and polishing halting answers, students recall. In one class on race, he imitated the way clueless white people talked. “Why are your friends at the housing projects shooting each other?” he asked in a mock-innocent voice.

A favorite theme, said Salil Mehra, now a law professor at Temple University, were the values and cultural touchstones that Americans share. Mr. Obama’s case in point: his wife, Michelle, a black woman, loved “The Brady Bunch” so much that she could identify every episode by its opening shots.

As his reputation for frank, exciting discussion spread, enrollment in his classes swelled. Most scores on his teaching evaluations were positive to superlative. Some students started referring to themselves as his groupies. (Mr. Obama, in turn, could play the star. In what even some fans saw as self-absorption, Mr. Obama’s hypothetical cases occasionally featured himself. “Take Barack Obama, there’s a good-looking guy,” he would introduce a twisty legal case.)

Challenging Assumptions

Liberals flocked to his classes, seeking refuge. After all, the professor was a progressive politician who backed child care subsidies and laws against racial profiling, and in a 1996 interview with the school newspaper sounded skeptical of President Bill Clinton’s efforts to reach across the aisle.

“On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection,” Mr. Obama said.

But the liberal students did not necessarily find reassurance. “For people who thought they were getting a doctrinal, rah-rah experience, it wasn’t that kind of class,” said D. Daniel Sokol, a former student who now teaches law at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

For one thing, Mr. Obama’s courses chronicled the failure of liberal policies and court-led efforts at social change: the Reconstruction-era amendments that were rendered meaningless by a century of resistance, the way the triumph of Brown gave way to fights over busing, the voting rights laws that crowded blacks into as few districts as possible. He was wary of noble theories, students say; instead, they call Mr. Obama a contextualist, willing to look past legal niceties to get results.

For another, Mr. Obama liked to provoke. He wanted his charges to try arguing that life was better under segregation, that black people were better athletes than white ones.

“I remember thinking, ‘You’re offending my liberal instincts,’ ” Mary Ellen Callahan, now a privacy lawyer in Washington, recalled.

In his voting rights course, Mr. Obama taught Lani Guinier’s proposals for structuring elections differently to increase minority representation. Opponents attacked those suggestions when Ms. Guinier was nominated as assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993, costing her the post.

“I think he thought they were good and worth trying,” said David Franklin, who now teaches law at DePaul University in Chicago.

But whether out of professorial reserve or budding political caution, Mr. Obama would not say so directly. “He surfaced all the competing points of view on Guinier’s proposals with total neutrality and equanimity,” Mr. Franklin said. “He just let the class debate the merits of them back and forth.”

While students appreciated Mr. Obama’s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand. When two fellow faculty members asked him to support a controversial antigang measure, allowing the Chicago police to disperse and eventually arrest loiterers who had no clear reason to gather, Mr. Obama discussed the issue with unusual thoughtfulness, they say, but gave little sign of who should prevail — the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the measure, or the community groups that supported it out of concern about crime.

“He just observed it with a kind of interest,” said Daniel Kahan, now a professor at Yale.

Nor could his views be gleaned from scholarship; Mr. Obama has never published any. He was too busy, but also, Mr. Epstein believes, he was unwilling to put his name to anything that could haunt him politically, as Ms. Guinier’s writings had hurt her. “He figured out, you lay low,” Mr. Epstein said.

The Chicago law faculty is full of intellectually fiery friendships that burn across ideological lines. Three times a week, professors do combat over lunch at a special round table in the university’s faculty club, and they share and defend their research in workshop discussions. Mr. Obama rarely attended, even when he was in town.

“I’m not sure he was close to anyone,” Mr. Hutchinson said, except for a few liberal constitutional law professors, like Cass Sunstein, now an occasional adviser to his campaign. Mr. Obama was working two other jobs, after all, in the State Senate and at a civil rights law firm.

Several colleagues say Mr. Obama was surely influenced by the ideas swirling around the law school campus: the prevailing market-friendliness, or economic analysis of the impact of laws. But none could say how. “I’m not sure we changed him,” Mr. Baird said.

Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama “doesn’t have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from,” Mr. Epstein said. “He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues.”

Leaving the Classroom

As Mr. Obama built his political career, his so-called groupies became an early core of supporters, handing out leaflets and hosting fund-raisers in their modest apartments.

“Maybe we charged an audacious $20?” said Jesse Ruiz, now a corporate lawyer in Chicago. Mr. Obama was sheepish asking for even that, Mr. Ruiz recalls. With no staff, Mr. Obama would come by the day after a fund-raiser to stuff the proceeds into a backpack.

Mr. Obama never mentioned his humiliating, hopeless campaign against Mr. Rush in class (he lost by a two-to-one margin), though colleagues noticed that he seemed exhausted and was smoking more than usual.

Soon after, the faculty saw an opening and made him its best offer yet: Tenure upon hiring. A handsome salary, more than the $60,000 he was making in the State Senate or the $60,000 he earned teaching part time. A job for Michelle Obama directing the legal clinic.

Your political career is dead, Daniel Fischel, then the dean, said he told Mr. Obama, gently. Mr. Obama turned the offer down. Two years later, he decided to run for the Senate. He canceled his course load and has not taught since.

Now, watching the news, it is dawning on Mr. Obama’s former students that he was mining material for his political future even as he taught them.

Byron Rodriguez, a real estate lawyer in San Francisco, recalls his professor’s admiration for the soaring but plainspoken speeches of Frederick Douglass.

“No one speaks this way anymore,” Mr. Obama told his class, wondering aloud what had happened to the art of political oratory. In particular, Mr. Obama admired Douglass’s use of a collective voice that embraced black and white concerns, one that Mr. Obama has now adopted himself.

In class, Mr. Obama sounded many of the same themes he does on the campaign trail, Ms. Callahan said, ticking them off: “self-determinism as opposed to paternalism, strength in numbers, his concept of community development.”

But as a professor, students say, Mr. Obama was in the business of complication, showing that even the best-reasoned rules have unintended consequences, that competing legal interests cannot always be resolved, that a rule that promotes justice in one case can be unfair in the next.

So even some former students who are thrilled at Mr. Obama’s success wince when they hear him speaking like the politician he has so fully become.

“When you hear him talking about issues, it’s at a level so much simpler than the one he’s capable of,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He was a lot more fun to listen to back then.”

 

[LooseCannon]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, your 2008 Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee is:

Senator Joe Biden of Delaware!

Joe Biden has twice run for the Democratic nomination, in 1988 and 2008.  Neither time did he get very far.  He's been a workhorse in the Senate, chairing twice the Foreign Affairs Committee.  He was one of the driving forces for NATO intervention in Yugoslavia back in the 1998 area, and he was also a modest supporter of the war in Iraq - interestingly enough, his views there are similar to John McCain's views in that the Bush gov't bungled the invasion terribly, though I don't know if he voted for or against The Surge.

 

[Wästed The Great]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

That is cool.  Yesterday, I was having lunch with a friend, and she asked who I thought would get it, and that was my guess. 

I'll be curious to see what the 'polls' think about this.

 

[LooseCannon]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

John McCain has selected his running mate:

Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska!

Governor Palin has served one term as the head of the state of Alaska.  Previously, she was mayor of a small town for two terms.  She is known for being against abortion and for drilling for oil in Alaskan wildlife preserves.  She has also rigorously pursued corruption in Alaska, though she is currently mired in a scandal herself.

 

[Invader]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

So SMX, were you at the big Obama speech?

 

[LooseCannon]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

Because of Hurricane Gustaf's course towards New Orleans, the Republicans are talking about delaying their convention in St. Paul.  However, I have the thought that this is less to do with New Orleans, and more to do with this simple fact:

If they nominate John McCain, he can no longer use money he has privately raised.  He gets $85 million and that's it.  That's all he can spend between Sept 1. and election day - approximately 10 weeks, giving him 8.5 million/week.  If the GOP pushes back their convention by a week, he gets to spend 9.4 million/week.  If they push it back two, it gets even more.  Because Obama can spend anything he can raise, this would mean that McCain gets to keep raising and spending for two extra weeks.

Right now, Obama has been saving.  He's barely run an ad through August and has, according to some estimates, over $70 million on hand, and is certain to raise millions more following the Convention.  He might have $80 million on hand by Monday, and can keep raising.  So while McCain has $85 million, that's it.  Obama can raise as much as he wants.  It is in the GOPs best interest to push the convention back as far as they can.

 

[Natalie]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

Strange thing about Sarah Palin (according to wikipedia), apparently she's pro-life, pro capital punishment, but also a member of Feminists for Life (or something like that). In my book, feminism and die hard conservatism don't really mix. But what the hell do I know? Anyway, I think this is a very smart political move on the part of McCain because he's an old white guy who's been in politics forever...so to balance things out a bit, he chooses a young (Palin is only 44!) WOMAN who is relatively new to politics and is certainly outside the stagnant mire that is Washington. So good for the Republicans, not so good for everyone else.

 

[____no5]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

I don't know her at all but LC's quote about her seems ok to me (after seeing some pictures of her on web)

And yeah.  The only way Sarah Palin will win debates:

Biden: It's obvious that we need, as a country, to change our course away from Bush's disastrous policies.  Eight is enough.
Palin: I'd like to respond to the Senator's point by undoing the top button of my dangerously seethrough shirt.

 

[Onhell]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

Strange thing about Sarah Palin (according to wikipedia), apparently she's pro-life, pro capital punishment, but also a member of Feminists for Life (or something like that). In my book, feminism and die hard conservatism don't really mix. But what the hell do I know?

I did a report about Feminist for life back in college. They are pro lifers because they believe abortion shouldn't be a contraceptive option, that women shouldn't have to choose between their job and their child, their schooling and their child, they should be able to have both. What they offer is a support network so women don't feel that abortion is "the only way."

They say that the reason abortion is a choice at  all is because of institutionalized sexism in which women have been marginalized and aren't given oportunities, the usual, glass ceiling, glass wall..all that. http://www.feministsforlife.org/

 

[Forostar]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

A very experienced candidate, eh McCain?

 

[Perun]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

They are pro lifers because they believe abortion shouldn't be a contraceptive option,

Disagree.

that women shouldn't have to choose between their job and their child, their schooling and their child, they should be able to have both.

Agree.

What they offer is a support network so women don't feel that abortion is "the only way."

Agree.

Two out of three ain't bad...

 

[SinisterMinisterX]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

So SMX, were you at the big Obama speech?

No, I sadly was not. The tickets were given away by lottery - I entered, but did not win a ticket.

This has already been said by many others on the web, so I'm sure you've already seen something similar...

Here's what I can't stand about Palin as the VP pick. It is obviously a purely political move. McCain must have set some conditions - female, far right politics - and then picked the first warm body who met the conditions regardless of any other attributes the person has.

Seriously... McCain met Palin once, and had one additional phone call with her, before picking her as VP. How can that be called a good choice? Obama at least knew Biden through 4 years in the Senate together. And there's the obvious difference of 35 years of public record of Biden's actions in the Senate, against Palin running a tiny town for a few years.

Contrast Obama: he chose Biden, who has plenty of detractors as well as supporters. In other words, not a choice that will gain many votes by itself (though it won't lose many either, so that's a wash). But it is a choice based on who's best for the job, not best for the election.

Conclusion: Obama is doing what's best for the country. He's already looking beyond the election to being a good president. McCain is only looking as far as November 4, with no regard for what happens after that. And since McCain is far more likely to die in office, that's a Very Bad Thing. The fact that Obama is already acting like a responsible president should, in a just world, seal the election for him. Sadly, the combination of racism and the GOP's usual dirty campaign tricks means it's still a dogfight for Obama.

What I'd really love to see happen at the RNC is for the delegates to reject Palin, and nominate a more qualified VP on their own. That is, if they have the stones to defy the McCain campaign and do the right thing for the country. Besides, such an occurence + Gustav = bad convention for the GOP, which is good for us Dems. It doesn't help much if Bushco handles Gustav well this time - Gustav will only raise the spectre of how Bushco handled Katrina. At best, Bushco can hope for a wash on that one. And last time I checked CNN (about one hour ago), NOLA was already starting to flood.

Remember to watch: http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Currently predicting victory for Obama, but just barely. The good news is that there's more "barely GOP" states than "barely Dem" states, so the Dems could put it away if they can get the big ones of those: FL, NC, OH.

 

[Deano]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

So good for the Republicans, not so good for everyone else.

Don't be so sure about that Natalie.....

Hurricane, Palin Roil the Start of GOP Convention
Schedule Set to Resume Today


By Michael Abramowitz and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; 9:51 AM

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 1 -- Republicans plan on resuming their long-planned national convention schedule Tuesday, a day after their opening events were curtailed because of Hurricane Gustav and roiled by their presumptive vice president's announcement that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant.

With the threat posed by Gustav apparently receding, convention officials will return to the business of nominating Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a McCain campaign official said Monday night.

[A planned keynote address by former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was canceled, the Associated Press reported Tuesday morning, replaced with speeches by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democratic vice presidential candidate eight years ago, and former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.). Both Thompson and Giuliani competed against McCain for the Republican nomination.

[Thompson and Lieberman will talk about McCain and describe their friendships with him, the wire service said. Lieberman, a longtime Democrat who dropped his political affiliation after losing his party primary two years ago, told CNN early Tuesday that he will not bash Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in his remarks. Instead, he said, he will appeal to "independents and independent-minded Democrats" to follow him in supporting McCain. "The guy's an independent, restless reformer who's always worked across party lines to get things done -- he is that and he will be that," Lieberman said of McCain.

Palin and her husband told the delegates gathered here that their daughter plans to raise the baby and will marry the father. "Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned," Palin said in a statement issued Monday by McCain's campaign. "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support."

Coming on the heels of Gustav, which led Republicans to cancel most of their opening-day events, Palin's revelation continued to reshape what Republicans had hoped would be a boisterous send-off for the McCain-Palin ticket. It also left some Republicans privately voicing concern that the campaign may have missed other potentially damaging background information about McCain's little-known pick. Palin arrived in St. Paul on Monday but had no public schedule as she prepared for her speech to the convention.

McCain aides pushed back hard Monday night against any suggestion that they had mishandled the selection process. "Nothing that has come out did not come out in the vet -- she was fully vetted," said a senior campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Republicans canceled speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney and instead staged an abbreviated opening session highlighted by appearances by McCain's wife, Cindy, and first lady Laura Bush. Both urged delegates to contribute to disaster relief.

"Events in the Gulf Coast region have changed the focus of our attention, and our first priority now today is to ensure the safety and the well-being of those living in the Gulf Coast region," the first lady said after receiving a warm ovation from delegates.

Bush scrubbed his speech to the convention delegates Monday because of the storm, but he may address the gathering by satellite video, said two GOP strategists, including one in the McCain campaign.

Both McCain and Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, moved to shift their approaches on the campaign trail as Gustav approached the coast. Since Palin was named McCain's vice presidential pick, the running mates have steered clear of partisan rhetoric, stressing reform and trying to package themselves as outsiders.

McCain also shelved a series of rallies intended to introduce Palin and to serve as a prelude to her Wednesday debut in St. Paul. His only public appearance Monday was at a volunteer organization in Waterville, Ohio, where he helped pack supplies to be sent to the Gulf Coast. Later in the day, he met privately with Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of Philadelphia.

During an appearance in Detroit, Obama set aside his standard stump speech and urged supporters to "give what you can" to the American Red Cross to help with relief efforts. "Today's not a day for political speeches," he told a large crowd gathered on a downtown plaza for an annual Labor Day parade. "There's a time for us to argue politics, but there's a time for us to come together as Americans."

Obama also found himself drawn into the discussion of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, telling reporters to "back off" the family.

"I have said before and I will repeat again: I think people's families are off-limits," he said. "People's children are especially off-limits. This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin's performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories."

He continued: "You know, my mother had me when she was 18. How family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics. I hope that anybody who's supported me understands that's off-limits."


McCain campaign officials said the Palin family's statement was prompted in part by a spate of Internet rumors suggesting that Bristol Palin was actually the mother of Sarah Palin's 4-month-old son, Trig. They denounced the rumors and went on the offensive Monday morning when the news of Bristol Palin's pregnancy surfaced.

Late Monday morning, as the news was traveling through the convention hall, senior adviser Steve Schmidt and McCain confidant Mark Salter waded into the media center for informal conversations with reporters but were soon surrounded by journalists. The two conducted an impromptu 25-minute news conference, at which Schmidt was peppered with questions about when and what the campaign knew about the pregnancy.

McCain's team hit back at reporters' questions about the vetting process, and warned that Democrats would risk a major backlash if they tried to discredit Palin or diminish McCain as a result of her daughter's situation.

"It's a private family matter. Life happens in families," Schmidt said. "If people try to politicize this, the American people will be appalled by it. The fact is that the American people, who are decent people, don't appreciate intrusions into the private space of good families."

But some Republicans remained nervous about the party's ticket, worrying about the potential for more surprises in the days ahead. "Palin's daughter's pregnancy is probably much ado about nothing -- I think," one GOP strategist said. "If there's more, it will raise questions about the whole vetting process because she's such an unknown."

Another McCain loyalist said he doubts the controversy will last. "It came out in the vetting, and if that's true, then the vetting worked," he said. "If that's not true, then I would have concerns."

But McCain supporters are encouraged that leaders of the Christian right are rallying behind Palin and her family. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement: "We are committed to praying for Bristol and her husband-to-be and the entire Palin family as they walk through a very private matter in the eyes of the public."

Karl Rove, a former top political adviser to President Bush, played down the political fallout from the situation.

"A lot of Americans know families, if not their own, that have seen something like this," he said in an interview. "The question is: How does the family deal with it? What they have said is that she is going to carry the child to term and that she and the father are going to be married. A lot of people will look at this and put it through the filter of their own experiences and know that there are a lot of different ways families deal with it, and I think this will be seen at the end of the day as laudatory."

McCain campaign officials dismissed questions about whether there were serious second thoughts about the choice of Palin as his running mate. "There's a real solid sense of what our mission is," one official said.

The official then added: "We dealt with it like adults and kept our eye on the ball. She's working on her speech. The plan for the campaign that was drawn up before she was picked is being buttoned up and adapted to her strengths. We're about our business. We're introducing her to the American public and with that comes inquiries. . . . You've got a bunch of pros who've been through this."

McCain's team continued to express confidence that the choice of Palin will be seen as sound and politically smart. "She is, by any objective measure, more experienced and more accomplished than Senator Obama," Schmidt said.

//

McCain may have shot himself in the foot with this one....

Here's what I can't stand about Palin as the VP pick. It is obviously a purely political move. McCain must have set some conditions - female, far right politics - and then picked the first warm body who met the conditions regardless of any other attributes the person has.

Agreed

 

[LooseCannon]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

Yep, I think Palin was a terrible choice.  Honestly, she's not very qualified to be president...and with McCain's age and medical history...

 

[Nigel Tufnel]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

This reeks of trying to grab the Hillary vote. McCain picked a woman just for the sake of picking a woman, no qualifications or background check required LOL.

 

[Invader]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

"She is, by any objective measure, more experienced and more accomplished than Senator Obama," Schmidt said.

Ugh.  That is so utter bullshit that it can't be justifiable by any arguments.  Palin doesn't even play well with what McCain's political card has been: experience.  He's 30 years older than Palin, for fuck's sake, and even Obama is older than her.  And Obama's at least served as a senator longer than Palin has. 

Good of Obama to distance himself from Palin's pregnancy thing, by the way.  Leave the dirty blackmailing to the Republicans, and if the scandal does affect the Republicans negatively, it'll do so even without the Democrats pointing fingers.

 

[LooseCannon]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

Here's the way it shores up right now.

Republicans have strong or fair leads in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming for a total of 176 electoral votes.

Democrats have strong or fair leads in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Washington DC, and Wisconsin for a total of 260 electoral votes.

Up in the air is: Colorado (9), Florida (27), Montana (3), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), North Dakota (3), Ohio (20), South Dakota (3) and Virginia (13).  That's a total of 102 electoral votes up in the air.

McCain needs to win 94 Electoral votes from the 102 available.  Obama only needs 10 to win the election.  So, if Obama wins any one of North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, or Virginia, he wins.  If Obama wins Colorado and Nevada, he wins.  If he wins either of those and New Hampshire and one of the midwest states, he wins.

McCain must win all the states given except for Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and South Dakota.  However, he can only afford at worst to lose 3 of those.  So he is clearly in the worst spot.

What makes it particularly interesting is the tiebreaker factor.  It is possible for the election to be tied 268-268, in which point the House of Representatives chooses the new president.  The house delegations get together by state and each state casts 1 vote.  In this situation Obama would win 27-21 with 2 ties, since the election results of November aren't in effect until January.

So while it is possible for McCain to win, he has an uphill climb against him.

 

[Forostar]

Re: USA Elections: Candidates Comparison

Alaska first!